Dear Mark,
This morning I came back to my computer after only 11 hours of absence and my mail box was filled with 29 new messages of which no less than 13 were yours. I have to warn you: you are flooding this mailing list, as 40% of all messages are yours. Imagine every subscriber being as active as you are: I would either end my life or my subscription to this list. It took me more than half an hour only to read your messages. Unlike you, most people have other things to do than writing to this mailing list, learning languages and mingling into whatever Wikipedia attracting your intention, such as work, study, and friends other than those you me(e)t on the internet. Any discussion topic attracting more than 10, 15 e-mails contains your contribution. You are streching those topics to a really undesirable length, often changing the subject radically and to a point where it becomes quite irrelevant for this mailing list (though I have to admit a few other posters occasionally also behave that way).
Many of your contributions are relevant, and often I can second them. But very often you are quite trolling, not only here but also on Wikimedia or some Wikipedias. WHenever it comes to anything concerning languages, you jump onto it, and always you are right and the others are wrong. It is not your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that brings you in trouble. I would, as well as you, abhor any regional language being corrupted by people who want to speak it, and I think English content on non-English Wikipedias is intolerable. But no other well-intending (or so I suppose) contributor but you would ever achieve being blocked at two Wikipedias of which the languages are spoken at almost perfectly antipode places in the world. Perhaps you are getting too deep in Wikipedias where an adolescent boy from Arizona (or a student from the Netherlands, for that matter), unable to speak the language normally has no business. You blamed Gerard in the interwiki matter to speak for the Italians: he could not do so because he was not one himself. Then a logical conclusion would be that you stay away at least at some places, wouldn't it?
I cannot emphasise enough how much I appreciate your sense-making contributions, but I have to warn you that many of your contributions are not so positive and that the trolls are gradually overshadowing your good actions. I know there are many more, both on this list and elsewhere, who have similar views. Yann made a similar, albeit briefer, remark on your meta talk page. A member of the Wikimedia Foundation answered, when asked what they would do if they got a $2 million donation, that "we should use it to pay trolls like Mark Williamson to go away". A prominent contributor e-mailed to me, when I mentioned our personal discord originating in the Requests page matter: "Don't take it to heart. Mark is constantly boasting around and pretends the languages are all his. Most people have quitted to take him seriously for a long time." Another prominent user siad to me in personal communication: "one of the reasons I haven't joint the Wikipedia mailing list (so far) is that I do not want to receive five (or more) e-mails by Node every day".
When saying things like these, I usually defend you by pointing at your good contributions. I do not share the view that you be a troll. That's why I urge you to take this council: Stop trolling, just because you aren't one!
Wouter
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